Share this Page

Possible Oracle bid led to HP's quick CEO swap, report says

Plummeting shares would make the company vulnerable to a bid.

By Washington Technology staff

Sep 29, 2011

Directors at Hewlett-Packard Co. acted quickly when they replaced CEO Leo Apotheker with former eBay CEO Meg Whitman because they were concerned that plummeting shares would make the company vulnerable to a takeover bid from Oracle Corp., Bloomberg News reports, citing two people close to the HP board.

Whitman took over as CEO on Sept. 22, after Apotheker oversaw a 47 percent drop in HP stock and sliced sales forecasts three times in less than a year, the Bloomberg story said.

After speaking with several financial advisers, HP has hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to help it prepare for any possible moves by activist investors, although it’s now unlikely that Oracle will make a bid any time soon, three people close to the software company said.

What is your e-mail address?

Do you have a password?

Trending

In an exclusive for WT Insider members, we are collecting all of the contract awards we cover into a database that you can sort by contractor, agency, value and other parameters. You can also download it into a spreadsheet. Our databases track awards back to 2013.
Read More